Killer Meals: Re-Creations of Death Row Diners’ Final Feasts

At least not when compared to the captivating images in Henry Hargreaves‘ No Seconds, a series of 10 stark photographs that re-create the last repasts of condemned prisoners.

“You can’t gain access to the prisons and there is no imagery available of the real thing, so I had to create them,” Hargreaves told Wired of the faux documentary photos. “I have no idea how they serve them their meals — plastic plates or cutlery? — if there is any love put into them or what they eat them on. So these scenarios are imagined as I created them.”

Hargreaves said he began the project after reading about efforts in Texas to end the tradition of offering condemned prisoners an elaborate final meal. (Texas officials pulled the plug on the custom last year after murderer Lawrence Russell Brewer ordered an elaborate last supper — barbecue, chicken-fried steaks, fried okra, three fajitas, a bacon cheeseburger and a pizza, followed by ice cream and peanut butter fudge — then apparently lost his appetite ahead of his date with a lethal injection.)

“Anywhere else in the developed world, the death penalty is just not even in the conversation,” said Hargreaves, a 33-year-old photog who hails from New Zealand and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. “It is a remnant of an earlier era. This little bit of civility, ‘Hey, we are going to kill you but what would you like to eat?’ just jumped off the page. I thought it could be a really interesting idea to try to represent visually.”

After some Wikipedia research into the final culinary requests of murderers, rapists and other Death Row inmates, Hargreaves and a chef friend set out to relive those final chilling moments. They cooked and plated the meals, pairing the food with simple place settings. Then the photographer climbed a shaky ladder in his New York apartment and shot the captivating images you see above. (Surprisingly, Hargreaves isn’t the only photographer to re-create such grim menus: In Today’s Special, Julia Ziegler-Haynes focused on the same subject, even choosing some of the identical last meals.)

Hargreaves has just finished some less-serious work — including Game Over!, a series of monochromatic images based on games from his childhood, and a book called 3DD, which he describes on his website as “boobs in 3-D” — but he’s also done his share of food-oriented commercial work for restaurants and magazines. And he’s done plenty of more whimsical work based on food, including The Jello-O Presidents, Bacon Alphabet and Food of the Rainbow. (Hell, he even shot Deep Fried Gadgets, which Wired wrote about earlier this year.)

Still, No Seconds gave Hargreaves unusual insight into state-sponsored death — which he called the “most unnatural moment there is.”

“Most people order fried food, or ‘comfort food’ — that notion was pretty chilly,” Hargreaves said of the inmates’ final meals. “Then ones like the single olive were spooky, as you’re left wondering if there was an intended message behind this.”